“Alba has lessons?” Ghost asked.
The boy nodded and gripped two handfuls of grass. He yanked it from the ground, bringing dark, damp soil up with the roots. He removed several more clumps, clearing a circular space, and then he tamped it down with his feet. Alba mimicked him, stomping and tangling herself around his legs, and he swooped her out of the way with a practiced swing.
“Let’s draw,” Alba cried, clapping.
“She is v-very smart,” Bayr said. There was pride in his tone, and he glanced at Ghost with a glimmer of a smile. “Watch.” He took her staff and, using the end, created a shape in the soft dirt.
Alba promptly named the figure, though Ghost wasn’t certain she was correct. Bayr nodded and stomped the letter into oblivion. Ghost tried to capture the image in her mind’s eye for later study. Bayr drew another shape, and Alba threw her hands in the air and shouted its name.
Bayr held a finger to his lips, quieting her, and pointed at the sheep. The little girl seemed to understand, and her next responses were considerably more subdued.
“Only five years old, and she knows more than I,” Ghost murmured, smiling. “You have taught her well.”
He shook his head and tossed it toward the palace that loomed in the distance. “Q-queen,” he corrected. The queen had taught Alba to read.
“The queen is as intelligent as she is beautiful,” Ghost whispered, and the knowledge made her glad, not envious.
A melodious chanting soared like a bird on the breeze, and Alba ceased her skipping and turned toward it, bringing her palm to her ear.
“Listen,” she demanded. “The keepers are singing!”
The song was deep and resonant, mournful and mounting, and Ghost lifted her face to the sound. It was her favorite time of day, when the Keepers of Saylok sang their prayers. She missed it when she moved the herd too far away to hear. Increasingly, the song became heavy and the melody morose, a dirge instead of a delight. There was no praise in the tones, and the hair on Ghost’s neck began to stand. The sheep, sensing her fear, began to bleat and trot in circles.
“W-we m-must go back,” Bayr stuttered, hoisting Alba over his head and settling her back on his shoulders. With a farewell tip of his head, he was running back to the walls, his hands gripping Alba’s ankles as she bounced above him, her pale hair floating out behind them like a stream of white light.
Bayr ran through the Temple Hill gates, Alba clinging to his head, her arms circling his brow like a crown of flesh. She was accustomed to riding on his shoulders; it was how he kept her close when he needed his arms and legs free, and she liked seeing the world from above him. She’d been riding on his shoulders all her young life. She didn’t squeal in delight at his pace the way she usually did. She sensed the fear in the keepers’ song, just as he did, and her grip was so tight his scalp grew numb above her hold.
The keepers were still in the sanctum, and the sound of their chanting rose from the rafters and spilled out of the bell tower like a death knell. The keepers were so loud, beseeching the gods with open throats. Or maybe it was Bayr’s fear, his dread, thrumming between his ears and echoing their pleading. The queen was in trouble.
A voice yelled his name, but he ran through the gate, running toward uncertainty the way he’d run toward the bear in the woods, hoping that courage in the face of terror would send death fleeing.
Inside the palace, the servants were huddled at the base of the stairs, their faces lifted as though they waited for news to descend. They scattered before him, clearing the way, startled by his presence.
“Don’t go up there, boy,” a guard bellowed.
“Leave the princess here, Bayr,” another voice begged, but he was sprinting up the wide stairway, his eyes fixed on the high window spilling light over the steps, his hands wrapped around Alba’s skinny legs, holding her steady on his shoulders. He couldn’t leave her behind, and he had to see the queen, had to reassure them both that all was well.
“Wait ’til the king has gone,” the same guard bellowed, standing at the base of the stairs, but Bayr ignored him, and the guard didn’t climb the stairs to stop him.
“Go!” he heard King Banruud roar from somewhere above him, and for a moment, Bayr faltered in his swift climb, thinking the king was speaking to him. Ice trickled from his head to his feet, and Alba’s hands tightened in his hair. Seconds later, a maid rushed down the stairs past him and then another, tears streaking down their cheeks. One turned back to grasp Bayr’s arm, urging him to retreat with them, but he twisted away from her and climbed the last few stairs to the wide foyer between Alba’s nursery and the queen’s chamber. The heavy wooden doors to the queen’s room stood ajar, and he could see Queen Alannah in the enormous bed that faced the door, her eyes closed, her hands resting on the bright blue coverlet that matched the color of her eyes.
Relief filled his chest before he realized the queen was far too still, far too pale, and when Alba cried out for her she didn’t lift her face or smile in response. The king stood over her, his hair spilling around his shoulders as though he’d run his hands through the length so often his braid had come loose. He turned his head, meeting Bayr’s gaze through the open door, and his eyes flickered over Alba, perched on Bayr’s shoulders. It was not sorrow Bayr saw in the king’s face. Not loss. Not even shock or rage. It was frustration and cold calculation, as though the king were contemplating a battle from atop a hill, a battle he was losing. Bayr dared not take another step. He dared not open his mouth.
Alba was braver than he.
“Mama,” she called, her sweet voice demanding her mother wake and acknowledge her. She wiggled her legs and yanked at Bayr’s braid, demanding to be let down. Bayr took a step back, his hands tightening around her pummeling feet. He pulled her from his shoulders but kept her locked in his arms, her face pressed to his throat.
“No, Alba,” he murmured. “No.”
Banruud, his eyes still locked on Bayr and Alba, pulled the quilt from beneath the queen’s folded hands and draped it over her lovely face and her tumble of golden hair. The coverlet became a shroud.
A wail rose and echoed like a howling wind, and for a moment, Bayr thought the sound emanated from Alba. But the girl grew still and the sound was all wrong. Bayr trembled, trying to place the source of the screaming, and the king turned, his eyes fixing on something—someone—Bayr could not see.
“She is gone, woman. Cease,” the king snapped, but the wailing increased. “Her suffering is over,” Banruud ground out. Then Bayr saw Agnes, the midwife, the woman who never strayed far from Alannah’s side. She stumbled to the bedside and yanked the blanket from the queen, as though she couldn’t bear to see her covered. Agnes’s veil was gone, and gray strands fell about her face and stuck to her tear-soaked cheeks.
She screamed again, her grief terrible to watch. She pulled at her hair and ripped at her gown, and when she looked at the king, her eyes were crazed.
“You could not leave her alone,” she shrieked. “You could not keep your filthy, evil hands from our queen. And she is gone. You have killed her.”
“Silence!” Banruud hissed.
“Your belly is filled with snakes, your crown is paper, and your queen is dead. I was silent once. I will not be silent anymore!” Agnes raged. She lunged for the knife on the king’s belt as if she wished to run him through.